


and i sang to him of nothing at all

by enjolraspermittedit



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Depression, F/M, Post-Canon, Preludes AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 20:32:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19384165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enjolraspermittedit/pseuds/enjolraspermittedit
Summary: Inspired by Preludes by Dave Malloy, Orpheus is struggling with writer's block and depression after he looked behind three years ago. Hermes is his hypnotherapist who is trying desperately to help.





	and i sang to him of nothing at all

**Author's Note:**

> You do not need to be familiar with Preludes to read this, but you should be, because Preludes is awesome and did I mention it was directed by Rachel Chavkin??

"How was your day?" Hermes asks, looking at Orpheus, who is currently hunched over in a chair sitting across from him. He does not have his lyre with him. He has not had his lyre with him for three years.

"My day?" Orpheus repeats, blankly.

"Did you get any writing done?" Hermes asks, even though he already knows the answer. Orpheus has not had his lyre with him for three years.

"Writing?" Orpheus says. The word sounds foreign to him. _Writing._ It's been awhile since he's done that. It's been awhile since he's done anything.

"Writing."

He hasn't. He hasn't and Hermes knows this. Everyone knows this. There is no point in lying. "No," Orpheus says, his voice shaking.

And then Hermes asks him to describe his day. Orpheus, of course, has known Hermes forever, but this is his first time in Hermes's therapy office. It's weird. Orpheus tries to pretend it's just a regular conversation between friends, and he launches into a description of his day. Not much happened today, or yesterday, or at all for the past few years. He woke up, fell back asleep, woke again, forced himself to eat and drink and shower and _tried_ to force himself to write or play the lyre but he couldn't. He read a bit during the day. He wrote a bit during the day, letters to Eurydice that he'd never send. But that was all that he wrote, much to the disappointment of himself and Hermes and all of the people who used to love listening to his music. If Eurydice knew, she'd probably be disappointed too, which is why he never finished his letters to her. Everything was so difficult now, except for sleeping. Orpheus's hours spent sleeping were the easiest hours of his day.

Hermes listens to Orpheus rambling, with a blank expression on his face, but anyone could've recognized the pain hidden deep within his eyes.

"How long have your days been like this?" Hermes asks.

Orpheus blinked at the question. How long had it been? Oh, right. "Three years."

"What happened three years ago?"

Hermes knows. Everyone knows. Why was he being asked that? He couldn't say it. "Nothing," Orpheus says, getting up to leave. Of course, Hermes only asked him because Orpheus needs to say it aloud. Needs to get to the acceptance stage of grief, so that he can stop being this empty shell of a person. That's why he signed up for therapy in the first place.

 _Nothing._ A blatant lie. _Everything_ happened three years ago.

When Orpheus gets home that day, he picks up his lyre. He tries. "La la la la la la." He can barely even remember how his old song used to go. He's forgotten his song of love. After all of this time, Eurydice is still his muse. But that's no matter, because she's not with him anymore. Orpheus looks across the room, to where the lilacs from Persephone are sitting on the table. She's been giving him lilacs every week now, thinking that the flowers will help strike a chord in his soul to help him strike a chord on his lyre. But they don't help at all. They do look nice, though.

The next week at therapy, it's the same thing, until Hermes asks him a new question.

"What would you be doing if you weren't a poet? If you weren't a singer?"

The question throws Orpheus off, because why is Hermes asking it hypothetically? He _isn't_ a poet or a singer. Not anymore. He never will be again. Still, he tries to answer the question anyway. Maybe Hermes meant to ask what he'd be doing if he'd never been a poet or a singer in the first place.

"I'd like...I'd like to climb a mountain," Orpheus says. "Not Olympus. A mountain for us mortals. Kilimanjaro or something. I dunno."

"What's stopping you?"

"I don't want to do anything alone," Orpheus says. "But if- if she were still here-"

"You'd go with her," Hermes completes the sentence for her. "Orpheus, I'm going to ask you something. How do you think Eurydice's doing now, down below?"

Orpheus's eyes well up, and he looks down at his hands, the hands that used to hold Eurydice. The hands that used to strum his lyre. "Well, I bet she's happier than I am...is this meant to be a metaphor?"

"Everything is a metaphor in hypnotherapy," Hermes replies vaguely. "How was your day?"

"My day?" He's already asked this. Why is he asking again?

Hermes nods. "Did you get any writing done?"

Hermes asks about writing again next week, but this time he asks _why_. Why Orpheus writes and why he sings. And Orpheus still has no idea why Hermes is using the present-tense. And then Hermes asks _who_ , who Orpheus writes and sings for. Is he trying to hurt him?

"I don't," Orpheus says. "But when I did it was always just for her. It used to bring me so much happiness..."

"And what changed?"

If Orpheus had the energy, he would have screamed. Hermes knows what changed. Everyone knows what changed. Eurydice was in a hole and Orpheus jumped into the hole but he couldn't get her out. 

"Why don't you sing for her anymore? Why don't your songs about her bring you happiness anymore?" Hermes is asking.

Orpheus's memory is a trap. He's not what he once was.

Next week, Hermes brings in his own lyre, and he plays the song that Orpheus sang for Hades. Orpheus keeps trying to stop him, but Hermes forces him to listen through the whole thing. Hermes is better at it than Orpheus is at this point. 

"Tell me about this piece," Hermes says once he's done playing.

"Well, I was working on it for awhile, and I finished it eventually, but not in time," Orpheus says. This is a question that he actually can answer, because he's gone through this so many times in his own head. "And I finished it, but now I'll never finish anything else. Because I won't ever start anything else. People will come up to me on the street and ask me to sign something or play for them and I don't understand it because I'm not the same man anymore. Softening up Hades's heart was the one best thing I'll ever do, and everything else is just going to keep getting worse. It's all downhill now." He'd fucked up. He'd embarked on a midnight march to hell and came back alone.

The best years of his life were behind him now. Behind him. _Fuck._ If only he had known what was behind him three years ago. But he hadn't, not until it was too early and too late all at the same time.

It's the same thing every week, every month, for awhile. But one week, things feel different when Orpheus walks into Hermes's office. And things _are_ different. Hermes does not ask Orpheus how his day was. Instead, he gives an order:

"Close your eyes now. Take a deep breath in, now slowly out..."

Orpheus obeys, unsure of where this is going.

"Imagine yourself at the bottom of a mountain. Kilimanjaro, if that's still a dream for you. Imagine yourself in a field of flowers below the mountain. You have your lyre with you. The sun is above you and everything is warm. All of these things are music."

Orpheus is still unsure of where this is going, he just knows that his lyre and fields of flowers remind him of his wife.

"With your lyre, you walk. You walk. You do not look back. You take tiny steps, you start to climb the mountain. Maybe before you started your hike, you stepped into a gift shop, and bought a little knick-knack. A tiny ceramic mountain with a songbird on it. You keep that miniature mountain in your pocket as you climb the actual mountain." 

Orpheus hears himself speak, as if from far away. "How do I know where to go?"

"There is a path," Hermes tells him. "A path made up of memory, and calmness and passion and instinct. And rivers, and trees, and almonds, and apples, and sugar from the maple. And birds, feathers, eiderdown. And dreams, and a kiss, and habit...and a lyre and you."

Hermes pauses for a moment, letting Orpheus take it all in, letting him remember and recall. His face looks less pained than it has in awhile.

Hermes breaks the silence to ask a question: "How long have you been blocked?"

"Three years."

"What happened three years ago?"

This time, Orpheus hesitates for only a second. "I failed."

"And what happens next?"

As if in a trance, Orpheus walks over to where Hermes is standing, taking tiny steps. He picks up the lyre. Not his, it belongs to Hermes, but there is no difference right now.

Orpheus sings.

He sings, and he thanks Hermes throughout his song. The rest of his healing doesn't happen overnight - it takes awhile for him to go out and sing for others again - but when it _does_ happen, he's able to restore a bit of joy to the world, and maybe even to himself too. At first, all of his songs are dedicated to Hermes, but he's eventually able to write and sing about Eurydice again.

It hurts. It hurts to sing to others about his muse when his muse ain't there to listen. He still has days when he's blocked, when he wants to end it all just to see her again. He doesn't do that though. He can't. He wouldn't.

And Orpheus may sing about gods, but he isn't a god, so his time on earth is limited. He lives long for a mortal, but not forever.

It's been eighty years ago to the day when Hermes knocks at his door. It takes all of Orpheus's energy to get up and open the door. The walk to the door is harder than his walk out of Hadestown was, harder than his walk to his lyre was.

"Orpheus, how long have you been without Eurydice for?" Hermes asks him after Orpheus opens up. 

"Eighty years."

"What happened eighty years ago?"

"I made a mistake. I made a mistake that I have forgiven myself for and that she will forgive me for."

Hermes takes Orpheus's hand. "How was your day? Did you get any writing done?"

"Writing? Oh, no. I am much too worn out for that."

"Grab your lyre. I want to take you somewhere."

And in that moment, Orpheus knows, and he is ready. He grabs his lyre and follows Hermes to a train station, walking on a path made up of memories.

"Wait," Orpheus asks before boarding. "What do I owe you?"

"Just keep on singing," Hermes answers.

Orpheus falls asleep the moment he sits down on the train, and when he awakens, he is in the Underworld. As he reaches below his seat to grab his lyre, he notices his hand. It's no longer wrinkled. Physically, he is the same as he was when he first went to rescue Eurydice.

 _Eurydice._ Had she waited for him?

He steps off the train, and he is taken aback. Hadestown is no longer an overheated city filed with overworked souls. It looks...normal, like any city you'd see above.

Orpheus walks, but he only gets a few steps before he sees her. And this time, it is okay for him to look at her.

She waited. All of these years, she waited for him, just as he had waited for her. She's the exact same as he remembers her, except she's smiling, and gods how he missed that smile.

He steps forward. "It's you. You waited for me."

"It's me. I waited for you." She grabs his hand then, and her hand is even softer than he remembered.

"Come home with me?" she asks.

Orpheus does.

Later on, Eurydice tells Orpheus how proud she is of him for staying alive, for writing music, for not letting the grief overtake him. And Orpheus realizes then that he's not going to stop singing even in death, just like he's not going to stop loving Eurydice. And with Hades's newly melted heart, Orpheus can sing and play his lyre to all of the Underworld's shades, the shades who had faith in him since his first trip to Hadestown.

Just like he did up above, Orpheus sings. He sings praise for Hermes and love for Eurydice and thanks to Hades and Persephone. He sings of mountains and gods and love lost and love found. He will sing of all of this, for centuries to come.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr - rated-r-for-grantaire (main), lilacswerewilting (preludes), hadsephone (hades/persephone)  
> twitter - butchhades  
> instagram - thisbrightstar
> 
> i've got like 24 ongoing projects and this one wasn't even planned. help me.


End file.
